E-thesis Programme

UCC Library together with the Graduate Studies Office and the Dean of Graduate Studies has established an e-thesis programme for UCC doctoral students. An e-thesis or electronic thesis describes a thesis in digital form that is generally accessed via the internet. UCC doctoral candidates are expected to submit an e-thesis at the same time as their hard bound thesis. E-theses will be stored and made available online through the UCC institutional repository CORA. Hard copy theses will continue to be catalogued on the Library catalogue and stored in closed access in Special Collections.

How to submit your abstract and e-thesis

You must register with CORA - register. After registering, you will be notified within 2 working days that you have been given permission to complete a thesis description form and upload an abstract. You will also be able to upload an e-thesis.

UCC doctoral students, who wish to submit an e-thesis to CORA, will send their e-thesis to their primary UCC supervisor for review in CORA. Supervisors can review, approve or reject an e-thesis in CORA. See Detailed guidelines on how to review an e-thesis [PDF 315KB]

Embargo Request

Under certain circumstances, students may need to delay access to their thesis, e.g., while they seek publication or where there is commercialisation potential or if the thesis contains confidential or sensitive information. This will be facilitated both online and in hard copy by the application of an embargo to the thesis. This request is submitted online through CORA when completing the thesis description form and uploading abstract and e-thesis.

Decision to Withhold E-thesis

Doctoral students who, with the agreement of their supervisor(s), do not want to archive an e-thesis will be able to request to withhold their e-thesis from CORA. They will need to complete a Decision to Withhold E-thesis Form and must be co-signed by their supervisor and submitted to the Graduate Studies Office at the time of submission of the hard copy thesis.

Doctoral thesis submission requirements

In summary, you need to supply the following to the Graduate Studies Office to meet doctoral thesis submission requirements. Further details are available on the Graduate Studies Office website.

Change heading from Digitisation of theses to Submission by Doctoral Graduates

If you are a UCC doctoral graduate with an electronic copy of your thesis which you would like to make available online through CORA, see here for further details.

Digitisation of theses

A project is currently underway to digitise older doctoral theses from the UCC Library collection. If you are a PhD graduate and would like to find out more, see Doctoral Theses Digitisation Project for details.

Benefits of e-theses

Providing full text access to your thesis online guarantees increased readership and wider dissemination. When your thesis is archived in CORA, you can

Link to the full text of the thesis in CVs and job applications

Increase dissemination and impact of your research

Increase accessibility to your work within UCC and externally

Track usage through ‘View Statistics’ feature for each thesis in CORA

Track citations over time with tools such as Google Scholar

Expose your research to industry and small to medium enterprises as well as voluntary organisations

For more information on e-theses, see our E-theses FAQ's page. If you have any queries about the e-thesis program, please contact: Breeda Herlihy, IR Manager, Boole Library, UCC, email: cora@ucc.ie or tel: +353-21-4205109.